Ferry AL, Vanderklish PW, Dupont-Versteegden EE. Enhanced survival of skeletal muscle myoblasts in response to overexpression of cold shock protein RBM3. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 301: C392-C402, 2011. First published May 18, 2011; doi:10.1152/ajpcell.00098.2011 is suggested to be involved in the regulation of skeletal muscle mass. Cell death pathways are implicated in the loss of muscle mass and therefore the role of RBM3 in muscle apoptosis in C 2C12 myoblasts was investigated in this study. RBM3 overexpression was induced by either cold shock (32°C exposure for 6 h) or transient transfection with a myc-tagged RBM3 expression vector. Cell death was induced by H 2O2 (1,000 M) or staurosporine (StSp, 5 M), and it was shown that cold shock and RBM3 transfection were associated with attenuation of morphological changes and an increase in cell viability compared with normal temperature or empty vector, respectively. No changes in proliferation were observed with either cold shock or RBM3 transfection. DNA fragmentation was not increased in response to H 2O2, and a cell permeability assay indicated that cell death in response to H 2O2 is more similar to necrosis than apoptosis. RBM3 overexpression reduced apoptosis and the collapse of the membrane potential in response to StSp. Moreover, the increase in caspase-3, -8, and -9 activities in response to StSp was returned to control levels with RBM3 overexpression. These results indicate that increased RBM3 expression decreases muscle cell necrosis as well as apoptosis and therefore RBM3 could potentially serve as an intervention for the loss of muscle cell viability during muscle atrophy and muscle diseases. muscle atrophy; hibernation; RNA-binding proteins; apoptosis; necrosis SKELETAL MUSCLE HAS A REMARKABLE capacity to adapt to changes in mechanical and metabolic environment. Whereas increased use in the form of resistance exercise leads to hypertrophy, reduced muscle activity, as well as certain physiological and pathological processes, can lead to a severe loss in muscle mass (for review see Ref. 25). Skeletal muscle atrophy is often associated with diseases such as cancer, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, diabetes, and congestive heart failure, and when present carries a poor prognosis (6, 44). In addition, age-related loss of muscle mass (sarcopenia) is an important predictor of mortality in the aged (40,48,49,63) and has been suggested as a main contributor to the loss of independence in elderly (40, 50). Muscle atrophy is also a common symptom in neuromuscular diseases, even though the etiology of the disorders is often quite different. Cell deathrelated signaling events are common in muscle cells undergoing atrophy, but the exact role of apoptosis, autophagy, and necrosis (three common forms of cell death) remains to be determined.In a previous study, we identified the cold-inducible RNAbinding motif protein 3 (RBM3) as a possible regulator of skeletal muscle mass under disuse-induced atrophy (23). RBM3 gene expression and protein abundance were increased ...